Bartimaeus

A kind man came to speak to us about mooring options beyond the sliding rail bridge. He and his partner had taken upon themselves to help the night travelling boats passing through and looking to moor, by operating the swing road bridge just past the rail bridge, so none of the moving boats needed to stop and work out how to operate it in the dark – she was out pushing the bridge in her dressing gown while the last boat through moored up. I went to to give her a hand as her partner was guiding Steelaway to a safe mooring. They chatted to us for a bit and then noticed a square raft with a motor, with workmen on it. Having just closed the bridge the guy noticed the workmen were probably now going to want through so we helped open and close it. We had a conversation about other bridges that were harder to open than this one. It was useful to see it work since we would be operating it in the morning.

It had a chain on it to hold it as it recoiled and bounced back considerably. The catch for the hook was under the arm so it would be easy to miss it and most do not have this feature. So in the morning Bryn and I went to operate it and were alert to it. We still missed hooking it fast enough first time and had to push it again.

What I didn’t realise was quite how many bridges there were between here and Bryn’s train. Each one requires a stop and delay and each one was different. The next one we tackled was button operated, not manual, but didn’t seem to be working. Then a man from a signal box came out and said it wouldn’t work until he had operated the level crossing for the railway which ran right next to the canal. He did this and then we started to close the road and operate the bridge. The next was similar in that we needed help from a man in a signal box but the closure was all operated by the boater, it just seemed a bit temperamental and the rail staff were more familiar with it. The key seemed to need a bit of a wiggle then we heard a clunky releasing the gates. We hoped we would manage some without help. There was some nice relaxing scenery in between. 

There were five more bridges to go and each one added about 10 minutes to the journey. Each had slightly different controls. Sometimes having a person to operate a manually operated road closure gate at each end made it quicker with two of us. Other times only one person was needed but we couldn’t tell till we got there.

I was a spare part at other times where it was automatically closed and just a thumb held on a button was all that was needed. Shane would give a thumbs up when he felt we could switch the thumb to the bridge close button.

After a few swing bridges we met a lift bridge. It was still just a push button job  though. They seemed to be getting easier.

Just as we were trying to decide if Bryn had time to operate the lock before going for the train, we met a pedestrian bridge it had four gates to operate and we realised this was the one that the couple the night before had referred to as “the b*****d bridge, excuse my french”. If any of the four gates was not correctly clicked back in by the previous person operating it, then it didn’t work. We found some gates would not release to allow them to be closed. I tried to start the proceedings again. Still some gates would not release. We knew that if you struggled they were quite good at coming to fix it if you phoned, but Bryn had a train to catch. How long should we try before giving up? A crowd was gathering. Another boater going the other way arrived too. A local gave advice. At last the light on the panel came on indicating the bridge could now be opened. Bryn remarked that there were plenty of tried and tested designs so why did they choose this one? Shane went through and we waved the other boater through.

We decided there was definely not time now to work the lock and just accompanied Bryn to the station, having asked the lock keeper if we could leave the boat on the lock bollards. It was just as well as that lock turned out to be so close to another road bridge that you couldn’t exit it without the bridge being opened too.

We decided to leave that one to the next day. We had done enough bridge wrangling for one day. But we needn’t have worried, the lock keeper took us to the bridge this time, and then he did the manual bridge without us leaving the boat.